


Out Where The Lights Are Blinding

by Infinite_Monkeys



Series: All Our Yesterdays And Days To Come [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Avenger Loki (Marvel), Canon-Typical Violence, Crack Crossover, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Loki (Marvel)-centric, Night Vale Citizen Loki, Sort Of, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, reluctant cooperation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-05-14 05:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19266457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinite_Monkeys/pseuds/Infinite_Monkeys
Summary: “And why should I care what threats press the people of Earth?”“Because that's you, now, in case you haven't noticed.” Coulson kept his expression perfectly level, earnest, even. “You've become a citizen of Night Vale. And Night Vale, whatever else it may be, is part of Earth.”In which Loki can be coaxed out of Night Vale, for a compelling enough cause, but the Night Vale can't be coaxed out of Loki.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This crack crossover has stolen my muse and run away with it. I have nothing to say for myself, except to express my gratitude to all the encouraging people who have jumped on board this train with me. I appreciate you all. ❤️

It took Loki by surprise when Agent Coulson slid into the booth across the table from him at Big Rico's.

Not so much that SHIELD had tracked him down: he expected that, sooner or later. The Avengers, at least, hadn't seemed fully satisfied by the Council's ruling that he be allowed to stay (Night Vale City Council, of course—he'd no doubt that many other councils existed and held a very different opinion of where he should end up, but those councils likely had fewer teeth and a weaker grasp of forbidden blood magic). He'd fully expected to be tracked down and harassed, sooner or later.

What he hadn't expected was for the agent to come alone, especially given their...less than amicable history. Frankly, he was surprised to find the agent alive, because while he hadn't been aiming to kill aboard the helicarrier, exactly, humans did tend to be fragile.

He also hadn't expected the man to politely hold up one finger, flag down the waitress, and ask for “the usual, please, and with extra cheese.”

It struck Loki that the man could be a ghost, haunting him like the physical representation of his past misdeeds. If that were the case, he was a bit late, and Loki was unimpressed. A ghost that couldn't be bothered to be punctual would hardly be worth his time.

Loki reached across, slowly, and poked the agent in the shoulder. He seemed to be solid and made of flesh, but such sensations could be deceiving. His continued unbothered stare dropped another tentative point in the ghost column.

“Loki,” Coulson greeted politely.

“Mortal.” He paused again as the waitress dropped off their pizza, enormous slices with Big Rico's newly characteristic gluten-free crust. It looked slightly less like cardboard than it had the last time, which he counted as a win.

“You're probably wondering why I'm here.”

“To haunt me for all of my past dastardly misdeeds?” he tried.

Coulson smiled at that, a ghostly flicker of movement around the corner of his lips that didn't quite reassure. Loki started to carve a banishment charm into the crust of his pizza with the tines of his bent fork, just in case.

“Not quite.” He pulled out a thin manilla folder and dropped it on the table. “I'd like to request your assistance in dealing with a threat to Earth.”

“And why,” Loki said after a moment, when it became clear that this wasn't a jest, “should I care what threats press the people of earth?”

“I'd think you should care a great deal,” Coulson said, “given that you're one of us now. You're a citizen of Night Vale, and whatever else it may be, Night Vale is a part of Earth.”

Loki hummed, and carved the last stroke of the banishment charm. Coulson still sat across from him, though, elbows on the table and hands folded above his pizza. Not a ghost, then. “Say I agree with that. Why me? You have your Avengers, my brother among them. Surely the Mighty Thor himself is sufficient to whatever threatens?”

“Acually,” Coulson said, leaning forward, “it was your brother who suggested we might need your help. He tells me you are in possession of skills that would prove invaluable in dealing with this particular threat.”

He raised one eyebrow in open skepticism. “Oh?”

Coulson flipped open the folder, and despite the fact that his expression never changed, the action somehow still struck Loki as overly theatrical. “We have...hostiles in San Francisco. Roughly human sized and shaped, but they seem to be made entirely out of some sort of swamp mud, and Thor seems to think they're a type of magical construct?”

The folder contained a blurry but unmistakable picture, probably cropped from some sort of surveillance camera. “We call them false draugr,” he said. “Thor is, surprisingly, correct. They're a form of construct, and the sorcerer controlling them cannot be too far afield if they are present in any considerable numbers.”

“There are numbers, all right. We've evacuated that part of the city and the Avengers have them contained so far, but actually stopping them has proven more of a challenge.”

He shrugged. “Have Thor smash them. He does love smashing things, and it's the one thing he's actually quite good at, if memory serves.”

“You wouldn't happen to be suggesting that because of what happens when he tries it, would you?” He leaned back as the waitress approached their table again, but she only set down a small vase with a couple of flowers in the center of the table, arranging them with her fingers before moving off again.

“And what happens?” The lights dimmed suddenly, and he glanced around in a quick check for light-devouring shadow beings, but there were no screams or odd, shadowy figures or ghostly static noises. If anything, the other patrons were acting suspiciously normal.

“The hammer sort of,” he brought his hands together, raising his voice to be heard over the music that started drifting from invisible speakers, “sunk into the mud, then disappeared. He wasn't able to call it back, and he's rather upset about it.” Hmm. That was...interesting.

Candles flickered to life on the table, somewhat relieving the semidarkness. Loki frowned at them with a sudden suspicion. Before he could put voice to it, though, something soft and red started to rain on them from above.

He looked up, huffed, and shook his head, dislodging several of the rose petals in the process. “This is not a _date_ ,” he told the waitress, pinching out the candle and bringing the lights back to life with a flick of his fingers. The soft jazz that had started playing a moment ago cut off abruptly.

The waitress looked confused for a second, then comprehension dawned and she winked. “Oh. Right. I'll just leave you gentlemen to it, then?”

“It is _not,_ ” he said, more forcefully. “Agent Coulson merely wished to discuss my involvement in this world's defense.”

“So you'll do it then?” Coulson's voice startled him, and he stood, brushing several stray rose petals off his lap.

“Perhaps. There are several people I must consult first, whose opinions I greatly value.”

Coulson stood as well. “This is time sensitive. I had hoped you'd be willing to leave immediately.”

Loki smiled. “Hope is a dangerous thing. In fact, it ranks just between ‘unsupervised child with a power tool’ and ‘swarm of flesh-eating bees’ on the official Night Vale list of dangers we will all most likely encounter at some point in our lives.”

Coulson nodded. “I'll be waiting for your answer, then.”

* * *

 

“You have to do it.”

Loki crossed his arms. “I don't see why.”

Hela gave him a dry look, one that made him feel uncomfortably as though their roles had been reversed and he were the unruly child. He held his ground. “What sort of father would I be, to leave you all unattended so I could hare off and play the warrior?”

If anything, Hel looked more unimpressed than before. “That's right, I forgot how you were the only responsible adult in all of the town, and there was no one else capable of looking after us for a couple of days. We're definitely not capable enough to survive, with competent supervision, unless you specifically are here.” He blinked. When had his daughter gotten so...maddeningly logical?

“Even so, I'll worry about you while I'm gone.” He uncrossed his arms and crossed them again.

“You worry about us when you're here.” Sleipnir nodded, the traitor, and he looked to Fenrir and Jormungand, but they were, if not in agreement with their siblings, at least unwilling to argue his case. “Besides, didn't you teach us that when someone weaker than us needs help, we should stand up for them?”

Loki eyed her, appalled. “I'm fairly certain that's the exact _opposite_  of what I taught you.”

She smiled. It was a terrifying smile, the expression of someone certain they were on the brink of winning an argument. He was almost sure she'd inherited it from him. “Well, it's not what you _say_. But somehow we learned it anyways.”

“I've no idea what you're impl—”

“You know I'm right.”

He opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it again.

She...made a fair point. And it was _maddening_.

“Fine.” He pointedly ignored her triumphant grin. “I'll take you to stay with Old Woman Josie, and if she agrees, I shall offer my assistance to the world's most clueless heroes.”

Jormungand hissed his objection, and he lifted one hand as he replied. “No, you may not stay with Hiram McDaniels. His green head, at least, is entirely unreliable, and his house lacks the benefit of angelic protection. Besides,” he said, “Mr McDaniels is busy managing his campaign. I doubt he has time to be properly looking after children.”

“I'd rather stay with Aunt Josie anyways,” Hela said, and it took everything in Loki to hide his shock at the casually-adopted title. The old lady herself was definitely behind it, but he couldn't quite put his finger on his own reaction, so he left it be.

“Only if she agrees,” he pointed out.

* * *

 

“Of course, I'd be delighted to look after the little ones.” Josie smiled widely and patted Sleipnir's nose. Loki didn't bother asking how his children, most of whom were at least three times the woman's size, qualified as ‘little’. “This place has been so quiet now that it's just me and Erika and Erika and Erika and—”

“We are immensely grateful for your help,” he said, carefully polite.

A small crash made him flinch, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Erika carefully tipping an armchair back upright while Jormungand, most likely the culprit, shook a doily off his head.

“Now don't you worry about a thing,” Josie said. “Do what you need to do, and everything will be just fine here until you get back.”

“Yes, I'm sure.” He might have squeezed a bit too tight when he hugged his children goodbye, but they didn't complain. “Stay safe, and don't do anything foolhardy.”

“Same goes for you,” Hela said.

He smiled faintly, at that. “I'll be back before you have time to miss me.”

Hela's grin turned impish. “Will you get me Captain America's autograph?”

“Now that,” he said, not quite keeping the outrage out of his tone, “I absolutely will not do. Not even you could convince me.”

Hel grinned smugly as she leaned in for one last hug. “It was worth a try.”

* * *

 

He found Coulson waiting in the Used and Discount Sporting Goods Store on Flint Drive. The agent sat in the back on a low-slung bench with mirrors on its sides, idly tossing and catching a tennis ball. When Loki walked up he straightened, carefully set the tennis ball aside, and stood. “Does this mean you've agreed to help us?”

“It seems I have little choice in the matter.”

The agent's meandering steps took them through a small winding jungle of athletic wear, along a path flanked by racks of skintight reflective shirts and green-and-beige hiking jackets, and finally to a dead-end wall of left shoes, carefully displayed in rows like the trophies of a marathon-themed hunt.

Coulson stepped forward, grabbed the toe of an atrocious-looking pink-and-yellow sneaker (the terrible sort with the separated toes, which Loki had been informed were not a horror confined to Night Vale, much to his surprise), and rotated it carefully on a hidden hinge to face the opposite direction as its fellows. A section of the wall swung inward on silent hinges, revealing a long, winding staircase.

The stairs took them upward until they reached another door and stepped out onto the roof, blinking in the bright desert sunlight. A helicopter whirred to life on the small landing pad, black and polished like the wings of a desert beetle. The small amount of grit and sand that somehow inevitably made it up to even a roof this high swirled underfoot.

“You know,” Loki said, raising his voice to be heard over the blades, “people can see the helicopters up here from down on the street. Your cleverly hidden door serves no purpose.”

“I'm pretty sure the door's for style,” Coulson answered, keeping his hands in his pockets even as his jacket whipped around in the artificial wind.

Loki grumbled, but climbed on board the helicopter. Ordinarily he might have objected and offered to handle their transportation via less traditional means, but he doubted the agent would agree, and in any case the thought made him uneasy. Perhaps it was paranoia, but he'd gotten the impression that magic tended to work better and more reliably in Night Vale when the casting was something the town itself would, for lack of a better way of putting it, find amenable. His own departure might not fit into that category. It wasn't overt, but somehow the town tended to hold fast to those who had become a part of it.

By the time they landed aboard a larger airship a ways outside of town, Loki was thoroughly annoyed and slightly airsick. The helicopter had bobbed and tilted in the desert winds in a way he found fully unpleasant, and the seats had been cramped and uncomfortable.

Coulson led the way deeper into the airship, through narrow hallways with too many corners and into an angular conference room several degrees warmer than was comfortable. A long, curved screen, transparent until he activated it with a gesture, dominated one side of the room.

“So I can brief you on the mission details while we—”

Loki raised a hand, cutting him off. “Not just yet.” It took only a second to draw forth the small radio, spelled to carry broadcasts from Night Vale across the desert.

The show had already started; Cecil's voice, low and soothing, drifted out with surprising clarity. “—lic service announcement: several of the goods sold at the Ralph's have, upon closer inspection of their inventory, turned out to actually be spiders. If you have purchased any of the following in the past week: oranges, pineapples, paper napkins, forks, blood runes, shampoo, razorblades, or grape-flavored cough syrup, you should probably check to make sure that you actually bought what you thought you bought. Orange and strawberry flavored cough syrup should be fine.”

“Is this really necessary?” Coulson looked visibly annoyed, and Loki counted it as a win.

“Unless your mortal technology has improved considerably in these past months, we have a good deal of time until we arrive at our destination. You can conduct your briefing during the weather.”

His children could contact him directly in an emergency, of course; they had seidr enough for a projection, and he'd reassured himself of their capability long ago. Still, having some basic information on events in his absence would likely bring peace of mind.

Or...not.

“Not to gossip...this is, of course, a _serious_  news program...but sources inform me there was a hot date spotted at Big Rico's earlier today. Not as hot as Carlos' and my last date, but well...you've already heard all about that one. Anyway, reliable sources report that Luke, the ancient and mythical embodiment of chaos, and an agent of the vague yet menacing government agency enjoyed a romantic, candlelit lunch before suddenly disappearing together in one of the agency's distinctive black helicopters. I don't have any details about how the _rest_  of their date went, but abduction by helicopter on a first date is unusual, even for the agents of the vague yet menacing government agency. I, for one, believe it to be a promising sign.”

He made the mistake of looking up long enough to catch Coulson's eye. He seemed composed, but a glimmer of amusement gave him away. Loki huffed and switched the radio back off. “Now look what you've done.”

Coulson's expression went back to oatmeal-bland. “I'll admit, abduction by helicopter on a first date is bad form. To be fair, though, when we met you stabbed me, so I'm probably not the worst on that front.”

Loki glared at him. “You aren't funny.”

“Good thing I'm not a comedian, then.” He switched the screen back on, and it flickered to life with holographic images arranged haphazardly across it. “Now, if you don't mind, I can get back to my actual job and brief you on the details of what we're getting into.”

Loki nodded, and watched with a carefully forced patience as the man went over what they knew about their enemy (less than Loki probably could have already guessed), where they were, and what the Avengers had already done to try and stop them.

These seemed, from their descriptions, to be both stronger and sturdier than the average false-draugr. It would take a strong sorcerer indeed to create such a thing, stronger, perhaps, than even Odin himself. Or else, and this seemed more likely, they were the product of the combined effort of several, or one person over an exceedingly long time. However it was done, the person or people responsible had his curiosity piqued. Definitely worth further investigation.

Coulson held out a small electronic device, and he took it, regarded it impassively for a second, then vanished it to a pocket dimension.

“It's an earpiece,” Coulson said. “It's so we can keep track of you, and you can stay in contact. You're supposed to put it on your ear.”

Loki looked him in the eye, keeping his expression carefully neutral. “If I did what I was supposed to,” he said, “I wouldn't be Loki.”

“So you're not going to wear it.” Loki almost smiled at the weary resignation in the other man's voice, audible through his carefully polite tone like an old color seeping through a new coat of paint.

“No, I am not.”

“Are you at least going to give it back, then?”

“No.”

Coulson sighed, but didn't seem to have any additional response, so Loki moved to stand beside him. “They are located here, you say,” he asked to confirm, pointing to a spot on the projected map.

Coulson nodded. “When we get there, we'll have to—”

Loki raised one hand, gave a short wave, and used a teleportation spell to pull himself across the continent.

After all, the air travel had annoyed him. Coulson's voice had annoyed him. The expectation that he would follow whatever guidelines the mortal government imposed had also annoyed him.

Loki had agreed to help, but he would help on his own terms. He'd come or go, help or hurt as he pleased.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are with part two! I hope this story isn't too much shorter than people were imagining, and I do have at least one more installment planned for this series. :)
> 
> I know I've said this, but I am truly grateful for all the people reading and supporting this odd little crossover. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy!

The spell pulled Loki to the middle of a Midgardian street, the black asphalt reassuringly solid after SHIELD's flying contraption. It felt wrong, though, and it took him a second to place that it was too quiet, devoid of bustling or even battling mortals.

No, these streets stood empty, and the buildings that surrounded them also rang hollow. Evacuated, then, as thoroughly as Coulson had promised. Smart. He'd have suggested the same, if this had been happening in his town.

Of course, in his town half the people would probably fight the constructs themselves, or else attempt to invite them out to brunch. The thought put a fond smile on his face.

His eyes swept the streets, taking in the signs that something more had happened here as he stepped over scorched pavement and shards of broken glass. If he was to help, he needed to find his brother and the motley crew that called themselves Avengers.

It took him less than a minute to spot a figure in the sky, and only a few seconds more for the figure to spot him. Loki waved. The figure sped up as it approached him, coalescing into a familiar suit of armor as it approached. The red and gold of the suit was splattered and crusted unappealingly in mud, and bits flaked off whenever it moved.

“Hah!” Stark dove and rolled, coming up in a small cloud of dust with his blasters trained on Loki. “Should've known you were behind this. Frankly, I didn't buy the retired suburban dad shtick for a second, not even in horrortown, USA.”

Loki suddenly felt deeply, immeasurably tired. “So you were not informed of Agent Coulson's decision to attempt to recruit me, I take it?”

Stark paused, but only long enough to raise the other blaster, aiming them both at the center of Loki's forehead. “What? Seriously, you're gonna try and convince me you're on our side? No, nuh-uh, not buying it. Rhodes, you buying this?”

A second copy of Stark's armor appeared behind the first, this one less garishly colored but equally muddy. “Sounds unlikely to me.”

Loki sighed. “I am only here because my daughter is unfairly persuasive and my home is, unfortunately, dependent upon the fate of this otherwise useless planet. Your Agent Coulson led me to believe you lot required my assistance. If that is not the case, I will gladly return home and enjoy the quiet evening I had planned.”

The hope that they would agree, that he could turn around and return in good conscience to his children, was crushed by a deep, booming greeting almost as soon as he finished the words. “Brother! You came!”

He sidestepped an attempt at a hug, but Thor, undeterred, only dropped one enormous hand on his shoulder hard enough to jar his teeth. His fingers left messy, muddy streaks on the leather of Loki's shoulder plate, and muddy water dripped from Thor's hair, dyeing the gold a dirty brown. “Well met.”

“No, Thor, don't ‘well met’ him, he's siccing his mud people on our city. Whack him with your hammer, or...no, wait, that's gone. I dunno, punch him or something.”

“You are mistaken,” Thor said cheerfully, “my brother is here to aid us.”

Stark sputtered. “You literally told us that this whole mess was because of a sorcerer, probably from Asgard, and the only sorcerer we know from Asgard who has a history of mayhem and destruction shows up right in the middle of it. It's two-plus-two, buddy. Not hard.”

“I'm gonna have to go with Tony on this one,” the man in the other suit of armor cut in.

“Actually,” Loki said, “even within simple arithmetic the answer to a question is entirely dependent on the larger context of the system within which you operate.”

Stark glared hard enough that Loki could _feel_  it radiating through the mask. “I know that. _You_  don't get to use math against me.”

He sighed. “Stark. What would it profit me to attack your city? There is nothing I want that can be gained through this route.”

“Didn't stop you attacking New York.”

“Yes. Well.” The crashing sounds in the distance grew marginally louder. “At the time, I desired to rule your planet.”

“And we're supposed to think what, that you've had a change of heart since then?”

“Since then,” Loki said, feeling his patience strain, “I have looked after one single Midgardian town, of which I was not even in charge, and it has been as much as I desire to subject myself to. You are all of you exhausting.”

“So let me get this straight,” Stark said. “You're supposedly no longer interested in conquest because ruling is _hard_?”

Loki sighed. “How about this?” He drew forth the earpiece Coulson had given him. “Ask your leader. If he has not had the decency to forewarn you, perhaps he will at least explain.”

Stark took the device and frowned at it.

“It goes in your ear,” he offered.

“Yeah, and how do I know it won't blow up my skull the second it's there?”

“As if I would need such a thing to make you explode.” They glared at each other for a second before Stark pulled back a plate of the armor on his forearm and dropped the earpiece inside.

Silence hung in the air for a handful of seconds before there was an audible click, and then Coulson's voice, projected from within the armor, said “...Loki?”

“You have got to be _kidding_  me!” Stark shouted. “No, no way, this has got to be a trick because Coulson is _dead_. You should know that, you're the one who killed him!”

An awkward silence hung in the air for a couple of seconds before it was broken by Coulson's voice, slightly tinny. “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“No. You know what? Even if he _was_  alive, why would he be involved with _you_?”

“We aren't courting,” Loki said, slightly defensive.

“I never said—why would you answer me with a denial that terrifyingly specific?”

“We aren't,” Loki insisted, and Stark looked a little like he wasn't sure whether to believe him, and a little more like he might want to be sick.

“Hey boys, we could use a little help over here.” The Black Widow rolled out from behind a car. Somehow, while the others looked as though they had lost a fight with a mud puddle, she seemed mostly clean, with the most notable exception being a smudge that ran along one cheek.

Thor nodded and moved off to return to the fray, but Stark held his ground. “Hey Nat,” he said, “you wouldn't happen to know anything about Coulson actually being alive, would you?”

She hesitated before nodding. “He's been in recovery. They put him back on active duty a few weeks ago.”

Loki raised an eyebrow in a way he was sure conveyed how unimpressed he was with the other man's doubt.

“Seriously? Did no one think to clue us in?”

Natasha shrugged. “A spy's job is easier when people think you're dead. Why are we discussing this now? And what is he doing here?”

She pointed to Loki with her gun, which was annoying, and casually left it pointed there, which was part amusing and part insulting. As if guns could kill him. (As if guns could kill anyone, he started to think, then remembered this wasn't Night Vale and they probably could. Miraculous immunity to bullets didn't seem to extend beyond Night Vale's own citizens, and while no one was sure exactly why it extended to those within the town, Loki strongly suspected Erika. It seemed like their style.)

He spread his hands, doing his best to look innocent. She'd be unlikely to be fooled, but it would probably annoy Stark. “I am merely here to help, however reluctantly.”

She gave him a hard, assessing look, then shrugged, lowering the gun. No doubt she could still shoot him at a second's notice, if she so desired; he'd be worried if it were relevant. 

“Fight's over there,” she said, indicating the direction Thor had gone. “If you can call it that. We've pretty much just been distracting the things to give the civilians time to evacuate.”

Loki nodded. It didn't take long for him to find Thor, battling alongside the Captain, Rogers, to hold back a truly impressive wave of constructs. There had to be at least several dozen, crawling their way over abandoned cars and shuffling through the street. The Captain caught one with the edge of his shield, an impressive strike that easily should have decapitated the thing. Instead, it merely staggered back before drawing itself up and continuing to advance. Interesting.

A faint whistling sound warned him of something coming up behind him, and he reached out and caught the arrow mid-flight. He spun with it and tossed it into the nearest false-draugr, and it sunk into the thing's face a second before exploding. Even that did little more than leave it faintly toasted about the face and shoulders.

“Good to see you too,” he said drily as the archer nocked another arrow.

“Uh, guys,” Barton said, an edge of carefully suppressed hysteria to his voice. He loosed another arrow, and Loki deflected it easily with a tiny push of magic. “Why am I the only one reacting to _him_  being here?” Loki just dodged an arrow that exploded into a net, wire mesh sparkling with electricity. The archer went pale. “You aren't all being controlled, are you?”

“No,” Loki said, raising his eyebrows as another arrow caught fire and then extinguishing it carefully with a spot of controlled vacuum. “Believe me, if I were in control here they'd be doing something far more useful than standing and staring.”

Thor, at least, had the decency to look faintly abashed. The rest of the Avengers, or the ones he could see, upgraded to standing and staring and _frowning_. Unfairly, the frowns were all directed at him.

“I called him in.”

Coulson. Loki had forgotten about him, truthfully, but at his voice Barton stumbled, an uncomfortable little half-shudder that made something twist in Loki's gut. “Boss?” he asked, and there was something uncomfortably broken in his tone. “Why—”

“We didn't have a way to stop this,” Coulson said calmly, but the group still held themselves rigid as though a frission of electricity had gone through them. “Thor seemed sure it was magical in nature, and we don't have access to many people who know about Asgardian magic. I judged it an acceptable risk to see if he knew how to draw out whoever we're up against.”

“And I can,” Loki said. His words seemed to break the trance everyone had fallen into, and heads snapped around to face them, expressions ranging from Barton's anger and devastated betrayal to Thor's mild excitement at the prospect of Loki tracking down someone for him to smash.

“And why should we let you do anything?” He rolled his eyes, because of course Stark would be difficult.

“I imagine if I do uncover a true villain, that will be helpful, and if I fail to do so we will be in a situation nearly identical to the one we are experiencing now. Cover me,” he said, directing the last words at Thor because he doubted any of the others would be willing or able to shield him from the mud monsters shambling ever closer. It turned his stomach a little to ask, too similar to other battles, other quests undertaken together in a past better kept out of mind. Still, Thor nodded, and he couldn't quite resent the trust that inspired. If the others had any further objections, they did not voice them.

He closed his eyes, reaching out for the telltale glare of magic among Midgard's otherwise depressingly mundane streets. He blocked out Thor beside him, the glow of his inherent magic like a bonfire, and ignored the small firefly-like glow of the constructs and occasional cowering human with a hint of talent. Instead he pushed past them, seeking, sweeping the streets with his mind's eye. A sorcerer with enough talent to animate this many creatures could not conceal themselves for long.

It took hardly a moment to spot it, the overwhelmingly bright glow of Asgardian magic in the Midgardian street. Something was off about it, warped and wrong and too-bright, but still it struck him as almost familiar. He teased at it, a gentle prodding that snapped back at him with a sting of familiar Seidr.

He opened his eyes, withdrawing his senses and blinking to reacclimate to the sunlight. “Amora,” he called, “you can drop the glamor now. I know it's you.”

The air shimmered and she appeared, smirking, sparks of green magic sizzling along strands of long, dark hair. “Well,” she said slowly, “I can't say I expected to see _you_  here.”

“What can I say.” He spread his hands. “I turn up when I'm least expected.”

“And ruin all the fun, too,” she added, with just a hint of a pout. “All those muscles, and the writhing around in the mud—it was quite the show.” She snapped her fingers and the false-draugr hovering at the periphery surged; within half a minute they had all of the Avengers pinned in place. The constructs latched on with impossibly strong mud arms, stronger even than they had seemed earlier, and not even Thor could shake them off. Loki himself, he couldn't help but notice, remained free. He doubted it escaped the Avengers, either. 

“I thought you liked the great oaf,” he said, jerking a thumb back to where Thor squirmed like a bug in a web.

“I do.” She moved forward just a little, and her cape fanned out behind her. “But until he does me the courtesy of liking me back, that wins him little favor.”

He tilted his head; fair enough. “So tell me,” he said cordially, in the exact same tone he might have used to inquire about the weather decades ago, on Asgard. “What brings you here to Midgard? The mud—it really isn't your style.”

“I'm here on personal business,” Amora said. “A pretty little mortal sorceress with an unfortunately unrestrained tongue. You know how well I handle insults. I can't abide them.”

“That's putting it mildly,” Loki said. He suppressed the involuntary shudder that tried to crawl up his spine by sheer force of will.

Amora frowned at him. “In any case, once I've razed this city to the ground, I'll consider the slight repaid and I'll be on my way. A healthy dose of revenge, nothing more.”

“Ah, I see,” he said. That did seem to be consistent with her character, though it didn't explain how she'd acquired enough power to build the army. Amora, as he remembered her, was a powerful sorceress in her own right, but this...what he saw now should have been far beyond her.

Behind him, he could hear the others continuing to struggle. He tuned them out to the best of his ability, focusing only on the enchantress in front of him.

A flash of something bright caught the light at her throat. “That's a very fetching necklace,” he said, carefully tactful. “Where did you come by it?”

Her grin turned wicked, and she brought one hand up to lightly trace a finger along the edge of a pendant. A bright yellow stone reflected light from its center, the color so intense it seemed almost to glow, throwing back rays of broken sunlight. “What, this?” She continued stroking it gently, almost like a pet. “I was searching for the Eye of Avalon.” Loki caught his breath at the mention of the artifact. It was a myth, a legend, an object more powerful than half those in Odin's vaults combined. “Oh, don't get excited. I didn't find it, not yet, at least, but my search led me to this.”

Now that he focused on it, the strange magic he had sensed before seemed to emanate from its core, twisting together with Amora's own and heightening it, augmenting it, strengthening and filling in the gaps. Magical objects, even those less powerful than the legends, could easily increase a sorceress' power by an order of magnitude.

Without question, it would be better for him not to cross her so long as she was in possession of that extra power.

“Have you got a particular attachment to this city, then?” She asked, her tone sharp enough to cut silk. The implication that he would do better not to have one went unspoken.

“Not as such, no,” he answered truthfully.

“Then I don't see that you have any reason to stay,” she said. “After all, I'm not here for all of Midgard, and I'll leave whatever corner of it you've sunk your possessive claws into alone. It would be in your best interest to walk out now and leave me be.”

“You're right,” he said ruefully, because she was. He could leave now, return to Night Vale, and not suffer a single consequence. If she were avenging a slight, she'd have no reason to follow him, and he'd not regret whatever trouble the foolish heroes brought down on their own head.

A few months ago, he'd have agreed and been on his way. He had no particular connection to the people of San Francisco, no strong or overwhelming reason to wish them well, and no responsibility for their well-being. And while technically none of that had changed—now, he could not see faceless, anonymous mortals in the occupants of the city. He saw in them Hela's scout troopers and Sleipnir's basketball team, Old Woman Josie and John Peters, you know, the farmer, Carlos who met him for coffee and listened to him rant and Cecil who took his side in the face of rumors, even if they were true. These people were not the same, but something that squirmed inside his chest didn't mark the difference.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “But I'm afraid I can't do that.”

“You've changed,” Amora said, looking him up and down not quite approvingly. “Something is different about you. I'm not sure I like it.”

He quirked his lips upward into the self-assured smirk she'd always hated. “I've settled down. Found a home in the suburbs, joined the PTA, become den mother of a scout troup.”

She raised both eyebrows, then. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“I am going to have to stop you, though,” he said.

Her expression hardened. “Pity,” she said, “I never took you for a fool.”

Two of the constructs moved forward and latched onto his wrists, one on either side. He had been waiting for this; at the contact, he let his magic flow into the one at his right, allowing him to draw on the winter that had always resided in his true blood. The mud thickened, growing stiff and slow. The smile slid off Amora's face.

But even as he poured all the ice lent him by his Jotunn heritage into the construct, the change was slow, weak, as though his magic were being swallowed into the greater pool within the creature.

It was a matter of time before the creature broke, but in a fight, time mattered. He hadn't managed to get his arms free when a third construct grabbed him by the throat, squeezing his air off under its fingers as Amora's eyes flashed.

“You should have gone when you had the chance,” she said icily. Suddenly his arms were free; either the force of his struggles had dislodged them or the constructs had let him go, most likely after Amora decided he wasn't worth the effort. He scrabbled at the arms, clawing until there was dirt packed deep underneath his fingernails, but the hands at his throat didn't loosen. If anything, they squeezed tighter.  His flailing fingers found their way to the construct's head, raking and scrabbling. Not enough. He needed to find the tangle of magic at its core and undo it, like unfastening a knot tied in stiff thread. The process had grown familiar during his time in Night Vale; there, de-animating things that never should have been animated in the first place had come to be at least a weekly event.

But then he had been unworking passive magics, and now he had the weight of another mage's seidr stacked against his own, and one whose skill had always rivaled his and was now augmented with a new artifact. The hands at his throat did nothing to help his concentration, and darkness pulsed at the edges of his vision. He pushed against the magic and the magic pushed back. An attempt to gasp for air failed, and he could hear Thor now even if he couldn't see him, his voice fuzzy but still clearly distressed. 

A lone, unanchored thought drifted through his mind as his muscles started to slacken. _You're a fool_ , it said to him. _You've gone and found a home and a family, then left them both for this_. His children—he'd have to trust that Josie would look after them (she would, and he was more than grateful to have that assurance), and hope that Hel didn't blame herself for talking him into this mad excursion.

But then another thought punctured its way though the first, needle-sharp and with a different resonance. _It's just dirt_ , the new thought said, _that's all it is. Dirt cannot harm you. You won't be strangled by a bit of dirt, that would be ridiculous_.

That wasn't true, not exactly. But it wasn't exactly a lie either—more of a story, though what was a story but a lie everyone believed (or pretended to)? So his magic reached out again, and with a final push he undid not the spell, but its container. The monster crumbled to dust around the knot of magic giving it life, and Loki gasped, only to start coughing when he inhaled the falling dust.

He looked up though watering eyes and grinned. “Is that the best you can do, then?”

“You shouldn't be able to do that,” Amora said sharply. “I spent _months_  on this army. They're _invincible_.”

He coughed, again, an embarrassingly long bout of hacking in which the bit of fear that had sparked in her eyes smouldered to anger. He raised one finger, covering his mouth and nose with the crook of his other elbow until he finished. “Current evidence would suggest otherwise.”

“There's no way Loki could have done that,” she spat. “What _are_  you?”

Logically, he could have argued that his ability to overpower her spell came from practice. After all, not even in Asgard had magic been so common and so necessary as in Night Vale. The town held as many threats as friends, and he'd spent more hours than he could count standing against one for the sake of the other. Anyone would have improved under those conditions, sharpened already-impressive skills to a finely honed point. Growth was unavoidable when your options were to adapt or perish.

It made sense.

Yet somehow, somewhere at the core of his being he knew this wasn't all. Amora herself had said he was different. She wasn't wrong.

Somehow, while he'd been becoming a part of Night Vale, it'd become a part of him. The town's magic, its tendency to follow its own rules, to see at once things as they were and as they should be and the places where those grow closer and farther apart—that magic had seeped into his bones like radiation poisoning, had claimed him and offered of itself in return. It had grown so close without his realizing that even now, he couldn't find the place where they entwined.

He wanted to laugh. The magic of Night Vale was a magic of chaos and stories, of blinding lies and shadowy truths, of the impressions and negative spaces left by the rest of the world, and it fit him like a glove. No wonder the town had called to him and claimed him as its own.

And he hadn't been conscious of a change, not for the weeks and months he'd called the strange little desert town his home, but now that he was back in what he might once have called the normal world, something _was_  off. It was as though the world had slipped sideways with him in it, and now that it was back he remained a few degrees off. He felt separated from reality. He felt oddly free.

“I'm not sure what you are,” Amora hissed, “but you are _not_  Loki.”

“To the contrary,” he said, oddly calm despite the power swirling through the air around him. Perhaps he'd grown used to it. Perhaps such things had forever lost their ability to inspire his awe, or his fear. “I am more myself now than I have ever been.”

He glanced down at the crumbled remains of the mud monster, and found the spot where the spell had congealed. It was meant to animate, to give the dirt life and will enough to follow the commands of its creator.

Here, concentrated by the loss of most of its vessel, it had apparently collapsed into a pile of frogs.

 _They are dust_ , he said to himself as he allowed his awareness to stretch out and encompass the rest of the false draugr army where it held back Thor and his friends with the strength of hundreds of men. _Nothing more than piles of frogs and dust, given life by thoughts and fears and expectations_.

He thought it, and let a little of his magic dribble into the thought until it took hold, reality latching onto the grain of truth and twisting it just subtly out of alignment with the rest of the universe. The magic poked and prodded at the weight and shape of that truth until it became what he needed it to be. Usually his magic would exert its changes on matter and energy, but now—now it worked to change the story he told himself about how those things fit together, amplifying and directing the change that occurred.

Sudden as a missed step, the army that surrounded them crumbled to dust, falling to the ground in a cascade as though they'd been poured from an urn. A writhing, boiling mass of frogs twisted under the feet of the Avengers as their bonds were released, and they swayed to keep from stumbling.

The Captain recovered first, pushing to his feet and sprinting straight towards the Enchantess like someone who lacked any semblance of self-preservation instinct. Amora, for her part, looked from the charging Rogers to Thor, who had called Mjolnir from where she'd fallen when the things collapsed and brandished her angrily, still covered in dust. She took two steps back and vanished in a flash of yellow light.

Everyone glanced at him, for some reason, which was less than ideal as he was still attempting to find a dignified way to breathe through the dust. “Teleportation,” he said, glancing to the empty spot where Amora had been. “I won't be able to track her, and I doubt you will either, but it's unlikely she'll return soon.”

He lapsed into silence, and for a second they all stood still, trying not to breathe the dust and to let the frogs hop along to somewhere they wouldn't be underfoot.

“Well whadya know,” Stark said at last, “maybe bringing him along was a good call after all.” Barton pointedly looked away from Loki, as though determined to pretend he didn't exist, and Loki returned the favor. It was almost amicable, considering.

Thor lunged forward, and before Loki could react, he was being hugged. “That was well done,” Thor said, and the tiny knife (only an inch or two, it hardly counted as stabbing) faltered in his grip where he'd drawn it back. “Though your timing could be improved,” Thor continued, so Loki stabbed him anyways, pushing the short knife into the space between two ribs. He yelped and pulled back, clutching at the wound and glaring, but it seemed more annoyance than actual anger, so Loki ignored it.

Stark raised a hand, thruster burning bright, but brought the other one up as well in a placating gesture when Loki took a step back. “Should we be worried that you can now apparently vaporize things to dust?”

“And frogs.”

He glanced down, then rolled his eyes. “Yes, Rhodey, I'm sure that's the most important thing right now.”

“I cannot,” Loki said, and a half-second later he wondered why he hadn't lied. Perhaps he was losing his touch. “They were already dust, in a way. I only encouraged them to show the truth of themselves.”

He wondered, suddenly, if that was part of what the magic of Night Vale did, encouraged people and things to be what they truly were. He wondered what that said about him, if that were true.

He cleared his throat, pushing the awkward thought to the back of his mind only to have it replaced by another. “The way I see it,” he began, “you all owe me.” The expressions that inspired ranged from Thor's open discomfort to Barton's hostility. He turned and very deliberately faced Captain America without quite looking the man in the eye. “But more than that,” he said, “you owe my daughter, who convinced me to come and help your miserable selves which, I assure you, was no simple task. For some reason,” he pushed through the rest of the sentence entirely on pure force of will, reminding himself that it would make Hel happy, “she wants your autograph, Captain Rogers.” He would have been pleased by the flicker of surprise in the other man's eyes if he had elicited it in any other way. A snap of his fingers produced a pen and a piece of paper, and he held them out expectantly.

Stark's laughter grated on his nerves. “At least she had the good taste not to want your signature as well,” he shot back, and that shut the man up.

Or it didn't. “Hey,” he said, sounding vaguely offended. “Iron Man is just as cool as Captain America. Cooler, even.”

He turned up his nose, but not so much he couldn't see Stark's wounded expression when he scoffed. “It would seem not.”

“Somebody give me some paper.” He took it, and scribbled on it, and thrust it at Loki. “Give the kiddo that, see if it doesn't make her happy.”

“I somehow doubt that.” Loki shrugged and tucked it away just in case. After all, she wanted the Captain's. There was no accounting for the taste of the young, he supposed.

“You sticking around to debrief?” That was Romanov, and her expression suggested that the question was a test of some sort. What his answer was meant to tell her, he couldn't guess.

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I have done what I came to do.” And now I want to go home, he didn't say, because it sounded too childish, however accurate it may be.

“Will you not stay? Just for a little while?”

The pleading note in Thor's words almost swayed him, but he shook his head. “A kind friend agreed to watch my children. I would not wear out that show of goodwill.”

“Oh.” He sounded crestfallen. Loki raised his hand to cast the spell that would carry him back home. “And who is this friend?”

He recognized the question for what it was; an attempt to keep him here a little while longer. He doubted Thor meant intentionally to antagonize him. He lacked the subtlety for that.

With a sudden burst of insight he realized that Thor must miss him.

Did he miss Thor back? No easy answer came to him. Loki was happy in Night Vale, happier than he ever would be in Asgard, or New York, or anyplace else Thor would be with him. He was happy with his friends, with his town, with the people who never wanted more of him than what he was and could give. He had been in Thor's shadow the time they had spent growing up together, but Night Vale was a place where shadow and sun were two sides of the same coin, each held equal to the other.

He couldn't quite say he missed his brother, not when that implied an acute absence, a loss he didn't feel. And yet, the thought of spending more time with Thor wasn't unpleasant. He didn't fear their rivalry as he once had.

 _I only ever wanted to be your equal_. Now, their differences had grown broad enough he doubted any could measure them by the same scale. The thought was freeing, somehow.

“Her name is Josie.” He lowered the hand, slowly, but still held the spell ready.  

Thor brightened just a bit. “Oh! We met. I spoke to her that time we came to your little town and...”

“And tried to drag me off in chains? I remember.” He snorted when Thor's expression turned absolutely pitiful. He could almost watch the progression of emotions play across his brother's face as he rallied, pulling a desperate smile back into place.

“I remember her. Her friends the angels were quite unnerving.”

“Yes.” He scratched his palm, uneasy. “Though they've decided to tolerate me. Heaven only knows why.”

A half-muffled laugh came from somewhere to the side. “I see what you did there.” Loki threw a glare in Stark's direction, but he only smirked, unimpressed.

“And what about next time?” Thor said as he raised his hand once more. “Will you join us in fighting the next threat that presses Midgard?”

“Perhaps. And Thor, you know,” he said as he gathered the spell, “if you truly want to see me, all you need to do is visit.”

He'd possibly regret that, later, but for now he had to hold back a laugh as the invitation slowly registered, the surprise on Thor's face dawning to gratitude. He released the spell, closing his eyes on the city and opening them to the outskirts of the desert. The sun had nearly set behind the sand, the warm rays of light just bright enough to make everything else look dark.

Exhaustion tugged at his limbs as he trudged his way towards the house at the edge of town. He'd used a fair amount of magic, between the fight and teleportation, and if he was lucky nothing too consequential would happen in the days it would take to recover.

The last bit of light in the sky faded and then  disappeared beneath the horizon, and the stars spread out like a tapestry above him, their light cool and comforting. Occasionally they winked, like the universe itself suggesting that everything was one grand jest, but one it wanted to include him in. The sand crunched underfoot.

He saw the porch light a ways before he reached it, bright and mesmerizing, and let it draw him like a moth to its promise of rest and finished and done. The door opened before he could knock, and Josie looked him up and down with a small smile.

“Is the world safe?” she asked as she held the door and he stumbled inside.

“No more than it ever is.” He took a proffered glass of water gratefully, not looking Erika in the eyes. “But we succeeded in our goal, yes.”

“Good,” she said, nodding to herself. “I just put the children to bed. You're welcome to the couch, if you'd like to stay the night.”

He wanted to go _home_ , but exhaustion was already eating holes in his consciousness. “Thank you,” he managed.

“Any time,” she said easily.

He managed to pull off his shoes and the muddiest bits of his armor before he sank down gratefully into the couch and fell into a deep sleep.

* * *

 

The next day, he woke early to a meal of pancakes that were heavenly (in an uncomfortably literal sense), and he must have been asked to retell the tales of his adventure, or at least the most interesting segments thereof, at least half a dozen times. He'd tried to apologize to Josie each time he'd given in to his children's begging, but she brushed it off. “The angels love stories,” she said. “They say it's what we're all made of.”

On the way home, he'd been struck by a sudden fear that they'd have no place to return to. Their home was not a house, after all, so who was to say it existed beyond the narrow window of time in which they'd lived there? The door still opened easily, though, and everything remained as they had left it—the air perhaps a bit staler, the echoes a bit more empty, but their home it remained. Was the home more a house than they realized, or had the town held a place for him? He was too grateful, at the moment, to care much which was true, but he imagined he'd discuss it with Carlos the next time they met for their weekly coffee.

His phone, a concession made at the request of those of his friends and neighbors unskilled in telepathy or astral projection, chirped once, and he read the text from Cecil. “Heard you were back in town :),” it read. “Would you be willing to meet for an interview? I'm free between 2-5pm, and I'll pay for the coffee.”

“Certainly. I shall see you at 3,” he returned. Cecil's interviews were largely harmless, even if he failed to understand basic privacy in his own, unique way. He may as well play along.

After all, he still owed Coulson for conveniently failing to mention him to the Avengers. He might grudgingly count himself among the Earth's defenders these days, but that didn't mean a perfect opportunity for revenge could simply be passed up.

“He broke my heart,” he told Cecil miserably, adding in what he thought was an impressively acted half-sob. “And after the children had grown so attached—I don't know if I shall ever be able to fall in love again, after the cruel way he left me.” He brought his coffee to his mouth to hide the edges of his smile, and blinked out a few more tears. “Why wasn't I enough? How will I tell my _children_?”

A bit much, all told, but Cecil still rested a comforting hand on his shoulder, eyes full of sympathy. “There, there,” he said, giving Loki's shoulder an awkward pat.

He pretended to hold back tears in the direction of Cecil's shoulder, and was rewarded by the angry half-grumble that meant Cecil was rehearsing something he intended to vent about on air. He only just barely held back his smile. Let Coulson try to return now, if he wished. If he was correct, Telly the Barber would have an easier time showing his face in Night Vale than Agent Coulson after Cecil's next show.

“Is there anything I can do?” Cecil asked. “To help?”

“No,” he said, with a particularly impressive half-hiccuped sob. “I'll manage. It's just...I hope no one else is taken in by his charm the way I—I hope no one else is hurt.” He slowed his breathing deliberately, then looked up through sad, tear filled eyes.

“I wouldn't worry about _that_ ,” Cecil said, his voice tight.

Oh yes. Coulson would be in for a nasty surprise the next time he visited, no question.

* * *

 

It wasn't until later that evening when they were all settling down by chanting the nightly recommended ritual (this one seemed to be a recipe for chicken parmesan, and Hela was enjoying seeing how ominously she could say the word “cheese”) that he remembered the one part of his mission left incomplete.

He reached into his pocket dimension, then said “Here,” and practically tossed the scrap of paper. Hela's eyes lit up when she saw it.

“You did it! You got his autograph!” She threw her arms around his waist. “Thank you Papa.”

“You're welcome,” he said, then “though I've no idea why you'd want it. So Captain America wrote his own name; any kindergartener can do the same. Speaking of.” He pulled out the second paper, the one Stark had given him. “This is Iron Man's. I didn't ask for it, but the man's ego is so large he provided it anyway.”

Her smile widened. “Even better!” He made a mental note to never, ever tell Stark she had said so. “We're doing identity theft in scouts next week,” she said happily. “I needed a signature to practice forgery.”

He choked on a laugh, and ended up hiding his grin behind his hands in order to disguise his amusement. It didn't work; Hela grinned proudly right back at him.

Like father, like daughter, he supposed, and a swell of pride bloomed warm in his chest.

They were none of them, exactly, on the side of the heroes, but neither were they the villains of the tale. They existed somewhere in the shadowy place in-between, and that thought no longer brought him the same sense of shame and desperation it once had.

It was not only a place they occupied, the long space between hero and monster. It was a place they belonged. A place they carried with them. A place that fit, somehow, in the grander scheme of a world not so black and white as he once imagined. A place from which they could do good, even, when the world allowed it.

“And do you have plans,” he asked, “for Captain America's signature?”

She shrugged, then looked him straight in the eye, the corners of her mouth twisted up into the ghost of a smile that looked too much like his own. “You never know when a bit of mischief'll come in handy.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was _finished_ , I swear it, but then lovely people left very good ideas in the comments and, well, now there's a very self-indulgent bonus chapter. Do with that what you will. 
> 
> I appreciate all the people who left me encouragement and ideas, even if it took me a bit longer than usual to respond to them. Thank you and this chapter quite literally wouldn't have been written if not for your feedback. I hope you enjoy!

“Guys.” Tony pushed his way into the middle of the rest of the team's poker game, which, rude, they hadn't invited him to (and that couldn't possibly be because he'd spent most of the day locked away in his workshop trying to figure out who was buying stuff with _his_ credit card, no, it was an _outrage_ ), and he practically threw his phone down into the middle of the table.

The slightly offended looks of his teammates (but not surprised, he wondered if that should offend him) faded as the broadcast played and it registered what they were hearing.

“Light without shadow is blinding. Shadow without light is empty. Balance creates meaning. Hyper-realistic piñatas create havoc. 

“Welcome to Night Vale.”

A few seconds of music jangled on, too long to ignore, too short to skip, then the voice resumed. 

“Great news, Night Vale! Our town is home to a hero!” 

“Wait,” Steve said, and he reached over and paused the recording. “Isn't this the radio guy from that weird town? The one with...” He trailed off and glanced at Clint, who had gone rigid. The archer stood abruptly and left the room, and Steve continued. “The one where Loki lives now?” 

Tony nodded. “Yup.” 

“How do _you_  have this?” 

He shrugged. “I keep tabs on SHIELD. So sue me. Don't you want to hear what they're saying about our last mission?” 

“I would. Very much,” Thor said, and Tony switched it back on. 

“Listeners,” the deep voice continued, “you all know the ancient and mythical embodiment of chaos, Luke, who lives here in town. What you may not know is that he recently saved the entire world and all of the people who live here, including you and me, all of our friends and family, and even Steve Carlsberg, but we can forgive him for that. Take that, Steve! Now don't you feel silly for saying all of those nonsensical things about how Luke is ‘dangerous’ and ‘clearly that same guy who attacked New York with an alien army’ and ‘he literally just stabbed the checkout guy at the grocery store, oh beams the blood, the blood’? That checkout guy was _fine_. For shame, Steve, for shame. No one needs your unnecessary drama.” 

Steve's eyebrows arched towards his hairline, but Thor looked almost amused. Apparently the stabbing of grocery checkout people didn't rate much concern in Asgard. 

“Sources say some heroes, whose names I have already forgotten because, honestly, listeners, they aren't very important to this story—we'll just call them ‘those other guys’ for now.

“So, anyways, those other guys were in the middle of losing. This isn't anything to be ashamed of, of course. We've all lost things. Why, just this morning I lost my keys, or thought I had. It turned out that I had accidentally left them in the pocket of Carlos' overnight bag. It seems that when you share things or change things or even just move them, some other things might get lost along the way. In my case, my keys. In the case of those other guys, the battle deciding the fate of the entire world. Here in my house of glass I can hardly be the one to cast stones at those who are also losing. 

“In any case, and now, I'm not _completely_  clear on this part, but it sounds like beings made out of living mud were encroaching upon a faraway city. Since this wouldn't have been a problem if they'd have been peaceful immigrants, looking for jobs and homes and reasonable health care benefits, we can only assume they were hostile invaders bent on the destruction of all we hold dear.

“Those other guys just could not stop the beings of living mud bent on our destruction. I shouldn't have to explain to you why that was a problem, dear listeners, so I won't. These heroes were on the route to a brutal and utter defeat, but then, when it looked like all was lost, Luke showed up and called on ancient and powerful magic to destroy the entire army singlehandedly and save everyone. I wasn't there, but I'm sure it was spectacular.

“If you see Luke around, be sure to show your appreciation in the traditional manner with gifts of Girl Scout cookies and coconuts.”

The broadcast then shifted over into traffic, which, instead of anything featuring roads and cars, seemed to consist entirely of descriptions of the different sorts of rain. 

“Rain soft and all-consuming as static,” said the broadcast. 

“We could've taken them,” Tony said. He looked around at his teammates, who weren't quite meeting his eyes. “Right? I mean, sure, we were struggling, but we would have stopped them eventually?” 

“Rain that drums on the roof like the marching feet of a small municipal army,” the radio droned in the background 

“But how much of the city would've been destroyed before that happened?” Steve gave him a look he'd taken to thinking of as his ‘I worry because I'm very responsible’ look. “No evacuation is ever complete. We were lucky as it was that no one was hurt.”

“Rain that drops steadily from clouds dark as the smudges at the edge of a charcoal drawing,” the broadcast continued cheerfully. 

“We didn't manage to take down a single one,” Natasha pointed out ruthlessly, “and we only slowed them down because she let us. She was toying with us.” 

“Rain that wrings itself out of the clouds like the twisting of a dishcloth.”

Thor cleared his throat. “It would not be unlike the Enchantress to let us believe we had won once her intended radius of destruction was complete.”

“Rain. This has been: traffic.” 

“I still think we could've done it,” Tony mumbled, and even though no one contradicted him again, the silence was still unsatisfying. 

Or, not silence exactly. The broadcast had moved on, the music in the background fading from an almost jangling cheer to something more sedate and also vaguely otherworldly. 

“A public safety announcement regarding our blind yet almost completely deserved faith in the goodwill of our kind and benevolent government overlords: now I must stress, dear listeners, that _most_  of the agents of the vague-yet-menacing government agency are completely trustworthy. All stand-up guys, those shady government agents, _or so we thought_. As it turns out, a _certain_  government agent is not, in fact, deserving of our trust. To. The. Contrary. This certain agent, who has been seen at Big Rico's ordering pizza with extra cheese and luring upstanding members of our community into helicopters using his wiles and charms, is in fact, completely _un_ trustworthy. Here is an incomplete list of things with which this agent in particular should not be trusted: your heart. Your mind. Your conversation. The heart, specifically, of Luke, the ancient and mythical being of chaos who recently saved all of our lives. Your children. Luke's children. Power tools, or at least, I assume so. Your attention. Dogs, especially young dogs and puppies. Financial transactions. Friendship. Honestly, listeners, it is recommended that if you see this particular agent, you should pretend that you do not see him, and report the sighting to the Sheriff's Secret Police at the earliest opportunity.”

“I think that's our very own Agent Coulson,” Tony said through a mouthful of grapes he'd picked up off the counter. “He got a transfer order not too long after this aired, and he wasn't happy about it.”

A surprisingly dark look crossed Thor's face, and Tony carefully didn't ask. If there was a history there, he'd really very much rather not know, thank you. 

“In completely unrelated news, Carlos and I may have planned a number of romantic double dates, but we no longer have another couple in mind to invite along, due to recent events that I will leave unmentioned. The activities we have planned include a river cruise, paintball, simulated crocodile wrestling, a second-chance prom, and a relaxing night of screaming in uncomprehending terror at the Void that stretches above us, watching, stalking, hungering. Interested couples can apply by howling all relevant information to the full moon in the vacant lot out back of the Ralph's this Tuesday. Competitive applicants will have good table manners, a strong sense of humor, good conversational skills, and the approval of the angels who may or may not exist and whose hierarchy we know absolutely nothing about, if, that is, there's anything to know. Extensive swordfighting and/or lockpicking experience is a plus.”

“Nat? Are you seriously taking notes?” 

She shrugged, looking at Tony like his perfectly-rational outrage was an unnecessary overreaction. “It'd be a good source of intel, and if you're right then Coulson's been burned. Besides,” she added with a half-smile that left him unsure whether she was serious, “I enjoy simulated crocodile wrestling.”

He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

What followed was an absolutely terrifying advertisement—he was sure the words “lend us your ears, we promise to return them within seven to ten business days” would haunt his nightmares—and then an oddly bluesy song featuring dueling harmonicas that he couldn't quite bring himself to skip. If the faces of his teammates were anything to go off of, they were as oddly fascinated by it as he was. 

Finally, the last notes faded out and the announcer's voice returned, deep and melodious. 

“Listeners, as we draw near the end of our time together, I'd like to talk about expectations. We expect a lot of things, I think, and many of those things are wrong. We expect that we know what people are like when we've only just met them, and possibly on a bad day. We expect that we can trust the comforting hand of government, whatever lone agents may wield it for their own disgraceful purposes. 

“But most of all, we expect that other people will take responsibility for the hard work of saving the world. We expect to read about it after it's all said and done, on the news, in the history books, or even listening to a radio program like this one. But sometimes, it's us that needs to save the day. We live our lives relying on other people, on heroes, but the reality is that heroes are our neighbors. They are people just like you and me who say no, I won't wait for someone else to do the right thing, I'll do it myself. They are our friends and our family. They could be us. 

“In fact, I suspect that we are all one important decision away from being a hero. But listeners, the truth is we may not know what that decision is at the time. We may not make the right decision when the time comes, or be able to, and if we can't or don't, well, we can only be grateful when someone else does. And Night Vale, tonight we are grateful. 

“Goodnight, Night Vale, goodnight.”

The recording finished, fading to static then silence. 

“This doesn't make him a hero,” Tony said at last, because it _didn't_. People didn't go from public enemy number one to being one of the good guys. The chasm between the two was too wide, too filled with issues. 

But then, hadn't he done just that? Iron Man was a far cry from the merchant of death. And Natasha, he'd mostly left the files on her alone out of respect (and maybeee a little fear), but he didn't need more than reputation to know her past was shady with a capital ‘s’. Clint, he didn't know much about the guy's history, but he had some skills you don't learn in an honest day's work, if you catch the drift. If mythology could be believed, past Thor was a bit smash-happy, and the same could be said of present-day Hulk. 

Honestly, Cap might be the only one of them without a capital-p Past, and Tony knew him too well by now to believe the boy-scout persona. So maybe there was some merit to the idea that, like sheepdogs bred from the wolves they defend against, the line between hero and villain was thinner than any of them would find comforting. 

Was the difference growth? Or just that they now all had something in the world worth protecting? He shied away from that line of thought; too much introspection paved the road to madness. 

“It doesn't,” he repeated, but with less conviction than before. 

“Oh, I don't know.” Thor smiled, smaller, more strained than his usual, but a smile nonetheless. “This radio fellow seems to know what he speaks of.”


End file.
